Gulliver

AS PRESIDENT of US Airways, Scott Kirby (pictured) cut costs by eliminating free non-alcoholic drinks for coach passengers. This week, he was probably popping the cork on something fizzy. On Tuesday, American Airlines, which took over US Airways in 2013, announced that Mr Kirby is out of his job—and filings show that he is walking away with $13m and lifetime flying privileges.

For passengers who have felt the pinch of every airline cost-saving manoeuvre, the discrepancy will feel cruel. So-called golden parachutes are standard practice in the corporate world, and Mr Kirby’s is peanuts compared with, say, Steve Wynn, a casino mogul who negotiated a $358m exit deal.

ONE of the most maddening elements of international travel is figuring out when and how much to tip. Most travellers know that in an American restaurant or taxi, it is standard to tip 15-20%, even if the service isn’t exemplary. In much of Europe, nothing more than a round-up to the nearest euro is expected. But things get more confusing when you set foot in a hotel. To European travellers visiting America, vexing questions abound. Is a 20% tip still standard for room service? How much do you tip a porter, valet or concierge, none of whom receives a base payment from which you can derive a percentage?

SKYTRAX recently released its annual airline rankings, and the message is clear: given the choice, it is better to fly on Asian carriers and to avoid American ones.

Emirates was voted the top airline by flyers across the globe, followed by Qatar Airways, Singapore Airlines, Cathay Pacific and All Nippon Airways (ANA). It is the first clean sweep of the top five for Asian carriers since 2013. (Turkish Airlines, now seventh, made the cut in the intervening years.)

And the big four airlines in the United States? To find them, you’ll have to scroll down a bit. And then a bit more.

BACK in the 1990s, British Airways, the nation’s flag-carrier, proclaimed itself to be “the world’s favourite airline” in a long-running and hugely successful advertising campaign. Watching its iconic TV commercials from sofas across the country, many Brits—a pint-sized, starry-eyed Gulliver among them—swelled with pride at what was, at the time, a genuinely treasured national asset. Were British Airways to run the same campaign today, it would probably stir a mixture of derision abroad and embarrassment at home.

Rising competition is partly to blame.

TWO years ago, this blog lamented the demise of in-flight entertainment on aeroplanes:

In a low-margin industry cost-cutting is helpful, but demanding consumers expect savings to be passed on. Equally airlines are keen to develop new sources of revenue. Giving up a small box which can command the attention of travellers for up to 12 hours at a time could be considered a surrender of one of the few areas in which airlines enjoy a monopoly. There are other pitfalls. Entertainment, like free drink, helps pacify hundreds of people sitting in small spaces for long periods of time. Planes without entertainment might mean more disruptive passengers.

It seems the airlines may have been listening.

FRANCE has long been the most popular destination for the world’s tourists. In 2015, 84.5m foreigners visited the country, well ahead of America in second place. And for good reason. It is difficult not to fall in love with its medieval villages, the wine and cheese, the chic architecture of Paris and the warm-hearted people. (Although you generally have to venture beyond le périphérique to appreciate quite how friendly the French can be; Paris n’est pas la France, as they say.)

Given the horrible year it has endured, it is a testament to the country’s charms that it remains so popular.

AS AIRLINES have posted record profit, flyers have been asking why they aren’t getting what they crave most: cheaper fares. But airline employees have been seeking something else—namely, more investment to make firms function better. That demand has spilled out into a very public fight.

Four unions at Southwest Airlines have issued calls this week for the company’s top two executives to step down. The immediate cause is a technology outage last month that led thousands of flights to be cancelled or delayed, leaving hundreds of thousands of passengers in the lurch and prompting questions about whether the airline had neglected its IT systems.